Terry Bean

Terry Bean is a fifth-generation Oregonian and was born in Portland, Oregon.[1] He is the son of Ormond and Jean Bean.[2][3] He graduated from Lake Oswego High School,[4] after which he attended the University of Oregon on the Chick Evans Golf Scholarship[4] graduating with a bachelor's degree in political science.[3]

Bean first became active in politics during college as a member of the anti-Vietnam War movement.[4][5]

In 1971, he began lobbying the Oregon State Legislature and the city council of Eugene, Oregon,[4] and helped work on a gay rights ordinance,[1][4] which passed in 1977. The ordinance produced an anti-gay backlash and was overturned by voters in a referendum on May 23, 1978. Bean was a leader in the campaign to defeat the referendum and coordinated efforts with Harvey Milk.[6][7]

In 1979, Bean helped to organize the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.[5]

Terry Bean is a real estate investor and broker. He is the President and CEO of Bean Investment Real Estate, a private company that trades and invests in commercial real estate, as well as large residential complexes.[2][3][8] He formed a partnership with Williams & Dame and Reliance Development, Inc to purchase the Portland Center Apartments, a group of three high rises in downtown Portland that they converted to condominiums.[8]

The late 1970s saw a rash of successful anti-gay ballot measures around the country. Realizing that their state-by-state efforts were failing, leaders of the gay and lesbian rights movement decided to focus their efforts on the national level. This led to the founding by Terry Bean and others of the Gay Rights National Lobby (GRNL) and the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF), two groups which later merged to become the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).[2][4][5][9][10]

Bean was the primary fundraiser for GRNL,[7] when it was still a new organization, and created the "GRNL 48", a club of top donors who contributed $1,200 or more per year. In its early history, the group found it difficult to find politicians willing to accept campaign contributions from a gay PAC.[11] The GRNL 48 eventually became the HRC's Federal Club.[2][4]

Bean has been on the Human Rights Campaign's Board of Directors since 1980. He is also a member of its Foundation Board and its Public Policy Committee.[12] and takes part in deciding the organization's political endorsements.[10]

In 1991, Terry Bean and Vic Basile, the first executive director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, founded the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a Political Action Committee (PAC) to raise money for gay and lesbian candidates.[4][5][14]

Terry Bean served on the founding board of directors of the Gay Games. (References required to substantiate membership on founding board of directors of gay games.) In 1982, he won two medals for golf in the first games held in San Francisco.[15]

In Oregon, Bean co-founded the Right to Privacy PAC with four others in the early 1980s. The Portland-based group was the first statewide gay rights PAC in Oregon.[4][5]

In 1989, Bean co-founded the Equity Foundation, a Portland-based philanthropic organization that gives grants to LGBT community groups and programs as well as academic scholarships.[5] He is currently a member of the board of advisors, along with Portland Mayor Sam Adams and former Oregon Governor Barbara Roberts.[1][3]

In 2018, Bean spearheaded a campaign to rename SW Stark, a prominent street in downtown Portland, Oregon, to SW Harvey Milk Street after LGBTQ activist Harvey Milk. On June 14, 2018, Portland City Council voted unanimously in support of the change.[16][17]

Terry Bean's political involvement is often behind the scenes as a fundraiser,[2][4] which has assisted in the initial success of several organizations, including the Gay Rights National Lobby and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund.[18]

Bean often hosts fundraising events in his Portland home for Democratic politicians including Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore.[19][20]

In 1992, Bean helped raise over $1,000,000 in the successful campaign to defeat the anti-gay Oregon Measure 9,[21] which would have amended the state constitution with a provision declaring homosexuality "abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse".[22]

Terry Bean has been a lifelong Democrat and has considerable influence in the party as a member of the Democratic National Committee[2] since at least 2009.[23] Among his contributions are his fundraising for Bill Clinton,[21] serving on the DNC's Convention Committee in 2000,[2] serving as a co-chair of Howard Dean's 2004 National Finance Committee,[5] and being the first LGBT member of Barack Obama's National Finance Committee.[24] He was the main fundraiser for Oregon Governor Barbara Robert's 1990 campaign.[14]

In 2008, Bean launched the LGBT for Obama campaign website, which served as a fundraising tool and a means of outreach to the LGBT community.[24] In 2012, Bean raised more than $500 thousand for Obama's re-election campaign, and had visited the White House at least six times since June 2012.[23]

Though a staunch Democrat, Terry Bean's influence at the highest levels of government is not confined to his own party. Former Oregon Senator Gordon H. Smith, a Republican, was elected in 1996 as a social conservative. After the election, Terry Bean, who had campaigned against Smith, had a meeting with the new senator,[25] in which they reached an unexpected understanding. Smith, a conservative Mormon, was able to relate to Bean's experience as a member of a marginalized demographic because of his own experiences. Referring to his Mormon heritage, Smith said of Bean, "When you grow up as part of a group that has suffered discrimination, it is easier to listen with feeling to the stories of others, like Terry, who have felt the jackboot on the back of their neck. For me, empathy is a call to action."[9]

Smith cited his "unlikely and unexpected" relationship with Bean as a factor in his decision to break with his party and champion several LGBT causes, saying of Bean, "He really played a significant role in opening my heart and opening my mind to the perspective of a gay man in Oregon."[13]

Smith co-sponsored the Employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA), the Ryan White Care Act, and teamed up with Senator Ted Kennedy to introduce a hate crimes protection bill. Smith regularly read incidents of anti-LGBT hate crimes into the congressional record to raise awareness of this issue.[9] In comments on the Senate floor to mark the successful passage of the Ryan White Care Act, Smith referred to Bean as "...a highly valued advisor on issues affecting the gay and lesbian community in Oregon," adding, "I do feel lucky that Terry's advice is dispensed on the golf course – though the only criticism I may have for Terry is that he lacks the political savvy to lose to a United States Senator."[26] Smith's support of LGBT rights won him the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign for his 2002 re-election bid, although Bean did not personally endorse him.[9]

Bean with former Oregon governor Barbara Roberts at Portland Pride 2014

Terry Bean regularly shares the story of his childhood to develop understanding for the LGBT community, stating that he felt isolated and alienated from society and experienced constant fear and anxiety.[2][4][5][11] He believes that if the political climate had not been so hostile when he was growing up, he would have felt differently about himself.[5] In 2008, he was presented with an award by the HRC. In his acceptance speech he said, "In a way, I'm actually grateful for the fact that I've never been able to forget how I felt as a child – that someone would find out my dark secret. That painful memory actually drove me to activism, and that activism gave me a front-row seat, watching our movement grow from near infancy."[27]

The AIDS pandemic impacted Terry Bean's life in a very personal way. He lost many friends and two partners to the disease.[2][4][5] Bean decried the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations response to the crisis and threw his fundraising muscle behind Bill Clinton's candidacy in 1992, because of his promise to address the AIDS crisis. He said, "I have way too many friends who have just too few T-cells in their blood to be able to survive four more years of George Bush. This is the politics of survival."[21]

Bill Dickey, an Oregon business owner and gay rights activist, said of Bean, "He's on a different plane than most of us, but I've seen him standing on the Morrison Bridge holding a sign at eight o'clock in the morning saying 'Vote NO on 9', And he is in the trenches, and he's working with the President, and everything in-between."[13]

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski declared August 23, 2008, to be "Terry Bean Equality Day" in Oregon, in recognition for the work he has done on LGBT rights causes since the 1970s.[24][28]

On November 19, 2014, Terry Bean was arrested on charges of sodomy and sex abuse in a case involving a 15-year-old boy, in what Bean's lawyer Kristen Winemiller characterized as an extortion attempt by an ex-lover.[29] Law enforcement sources said Bean was charged with "two counts of sodomy in the third degree, a felony, and sex abuse in the third degree, a misdemeanor." He was arraigned in Lane County, Oregon, where the crimes allegedly occurred in 2013.[30]

After the case continued for over a year, lawyers for Bean and the youth reached a civil agreement,[31][32] which the judge ultimately rejected.[33] The alleged victim declined to testify, his attorney Lori Deveny stating that "he did not seek out this prosecution and made his unwillingness to testify known at every step of the process".[32] The judge dismissed the case on September 1, 2015 without prejudice.[34][35] In a statement, Bean wrote "I take some measure of comfort that the world now knows what I have always known – that I was falsely accused and completely innocent of every accusation that was made."[35] On January 4, 2019, Bean was re-indicted on the same charges.[36]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Terry Bean.

• List of LGBT people from Portland, Oregon
• LGBT movements in the United States
• LGBT rights by country or territory

• Official website